A Quote by Richard Elman

My own father used to boast to me of biting off a man's ear in a street fight. — © Richard Elman
My own father used to boast to me of biting off a man's ear in a street fight.
When I fight, part of the swagger that I had when I used to fight on the street comes out. When I fought on the street, I used to try to embarrass someone for even wanting to fight me.
Boxing's a poor man's sport. We can't afford to play golf or tennis. It is what it is. It's kept so many kids off the street. It kept me off the street.
To me, an untrained ear, a young person at the time, I would hear off the different feels, all these different sounds, and then years later realize that everyone had used the same equipment, just to their own ends.
My father's politics were old-fashioned in the sense that he used to say, all the time, "You've got to fight the system!" But my spiritual beliefs have led me to believe that the fight is the problem.
The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others.
I used to run the streets, my mom used to be crying all the time, coming to get me out of the police station all the time. Sports took me off the street.
My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?'
I still remember how my father used to wake me up at 4 A.M. and make me study. He also used to take me for a walk and then always dropped me to school. I was very disciplined, as my father inculcated those values in me. Now that my father is no more, I understand that you should not take your parents for granted.
Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.
I can fathom anything, man. I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.
Democrats' desperate attempt to focus on campaign finance reform instead of laws that may have been broken by the Clinton-Gore campaign is like Mike Tyson demanding a reform in boxing regulations after biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear.
I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.
I used to be in a street fight at least twice a week, so locking me in a cage with somebody, with a set of rules and a referee to jump in if something get ugly, and a time limit, like, it don't scare me.
It was the first fight I had with my father. My father basically said, why are you going to business school? You're just going to get married and have kids and you won't use your degree. And it's expensive. We had a knockdown, drag-out fight, which was great. Yeah. In the driveway. My father said, 'You're on your own.'
Al Jolson was my first husband. He always used to boast that he was spoiling me for any man who might come after him. I think Al sensed that it wasn't easy for me being married to an American institution... Was he right about spoiling me? I'm sorry. I couldn't possibly say. I couldn't be that indiscreet.
When a man looks across a street, sees a pretty girl, and waves at her, that's not a rendezvous, that's a passing acquaintance. When he walks across the street and nibbles on her ear, that's a rendezvous!
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